We Ask 30 Veterans of the '92 Alabama and '88 Notre Dame National-Title Teams Whether Football Bettered Their Lives

Given the growing pile of editorialists who argue that America's colleges, drunk on football revenue, are exploiting their student athletes for profit without concern for their postcollegiate well-being, it's tempting to make the following assumption: That for many of the players involved, Monday night's championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame will be the high point of their lives.

In the minds of many observers, the average player from a top-caliber college football team can't possibly be a very good student. So unless he makes a fortune in the NFL, there's a fair chance he'll end up working as a red-light squeegee guy.

The most-often cited measures for the integrity and academic seriousness of a college football program are things like graduation rates, academic progress rates and whether or not the school has been sanctioned by the NCAA. What's rarely noted is something more basic: Whether these players, many years after leaving campus, think the experience of playing football for their schools made a positive impact on their lives.

Notre Dame won its last national title in 1988. Alabama won a title four years later, in 1992. What these teams have in common, beyond Monday's rematch, is that many of their players are now well into their 40s and pursuing life after football. In interviews over the last month, 30 members of these teams offered a wide range of opinions on many fronts. But in nearly all cases, they agreed on one point: Success in life, however they define it, came to them at least partly because of—rather than in spite of—playing football.

Most of the Alabama players interviewed still live in the state, while Notre Dame's alums are concentrated in Chicago. Two of the players currently coach in the NFL, one is a college coach and one coaches kids full time. Eight run their own businesses, four work for insurance companies and three work in finance. There's a lawyer, an emergency-room doctor and two teachers. Everyone is employed and the majority are married.

Not surprisingly, about 20 of the players interviewed for this article played in the NFL. But in most cases, the pro game didn't provide long-term financial security. When Ned Bolcar's NFL career ended after four years, the former Notre Dame linebacker used the economics degree he'd gained to land a job on Wall Street, earning enough over 20 years to take time off recently to enjoy the birth of his and his wife's first child. "The guys I knew from Notre Dame football all transitioned into something successful in the workforce," Bolcar says.

For Mark Green, a running back from inner-city Los Angeles, a scholarship to Notre Dame led to the NFL, business school and then a corporate executive suite at a food-service giant Aramark. Former Alabama lineman George Wilson became a doctor. And even though former Alabama tight end Steve Busky had NFL opportunities, he chose instead to become a special- and physical-education instructor at a school for troubled youths.

Championship Diaspora

Most of the interviewed players opposed the idea that current college football players should be paid—in large part because of the difficulty of figuring out what should be done for athletes in sports that don't produce revenue. They also agreed, unanimously, that it's impossible to put a value on a football scholarship.

Derrick Oden, a linebacker on the 1992 Alabama team, went to high school in Tuscaloosa, the same town as the University of Alabama, where non-college-bound kids tend to wind up working at the nearby Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. or Mercedes-Benz plants. Oden, who says he likely wouldn't have gone to college without football, now lives in Decatur, Ala., where he works in sales in the pharmaceutical industry. "A lot of guys my age look like they're 15 or 20 years older than me," Oden says. "I could have been stuck in here in Tuscaloosa and not seen what I've seen."

ENLARGE

Derrick Oden, a linebacker on the 1992 Alabama team, now works as a pharmaceutical-industry salesman.
Steve Gates for The Wall Street Journal

Even those who never played in the NFL estimated they had earned hundreds of thousands dollars more over the past two decades because of the degrees they earned on scholarship—and because of the discipline that football taught them.

"[Former Notre Dame coach] Lou Holtz liked to joke that being on time is 98% of the battle," says Frank Stams, a linebacker on the Notre Dame team who is now a vice president of an insurance company. Busky, the teacher, says Alabama coach Gene Stallings helped him become a better student with this punishment: Football players who were caught missing class had to run early-morning sprints. "I was one of those guys who went to a lot of those 5:30 workouts," Busky says.

Though it may not come as a surprise, a national-championship ring can make networking easier. That's especially true for Alabama players who've stayed in the state, such as former wide receiver Prince Wimbley. In his last job at a car dealership, he closed deals for any customers with an affiliation with the University of Alabama.

One day, a credit-union chief executive came in and bought a car. After learning that Wimbley had played on the 1992 championship team, the CEO said, " 'I really like you. You're a good guy,' " Wimbley says. On the spot, the chief offered Wimbley a better job, which he took.

Sometimes the network extends outside the school, as former Notre Dame linebacker Wes Pritchett found out. After bombing a job interview on Wall Street, he ran into a former Penn State quarterback. "He told me, Wes, this is how you interview, this is how you roll football into why you want to work into this business," says Pritchett, who aced his next interview and is now managing director of an Atlanta financial firm.

For some players, winning a national championship set a new bar. "I did not want my greatest accomplishment to be that I was the starting safety on that 1992 Alabama national championship team," says Chris Donnelly. "I did not want that to be said at my funeral."

ENLARGE

Former Notre Dame linebacker Wes Pritchett is managing director of an Atlanta financial firm.
David Walter Banks for The Wall Street Journal

That thought "scares me" daily, says Donnelly, a manager at a health-care startup. "It helped me in the process…to be a better father, a better husband, a better businessman."

The players interviewed for this article said that the increasing commercialization of college football concerns them, in part because graduation rates for football players remain below 75%. Pat Eilers, a former Notre Dame safety who is now managing director of a Chicago private-equity firm, argues that the Bowl Championship Series should take graduation rates into consideration when ranking college football programs.

"If they did that, I think there would be more pressure for college football programs to boost graduation rates." For the record, Alabama's graduation rate for classes that entered between 1998 and 2005 ranged from 39% to 75%, while Notre Dame's never dipped below 90%.

In a twist, Martin Houston used his Alabama marketing degree to land in the NFL. The former fullback put together charts to show teams he was a better rusher and receiver than it seemed. He asked opposing coaches to write recommendation letters, which he sent, along with a highlight film, to every NFL team. Houston heard back from the Kansas City Chiefs. "They said if I didn't make the team, I could work in their marketing department."

After a brief NFL career, he became an AT&T sales manager. He now works as a Christian radio talk-show host and motivational speaker.

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